Wind and moving water energy is widely considered as one of the most cost-effective means of mega-watt scale alternative energy production. Alternative energy is a trade-off between the cost of invested capital and the cost of depletive energy resources. The depletion of world oil reserves increases the necessity to develop alternative energy. The existing technical approaches in wind turbine designs are targeted to high wind energy regimes so as to justify complex and expensive wind energy capturing systems.
Wind energy has been a frontrunner in the field of alternative energy. The capital cost per kilowatt-hour is of primary importance. The energy in the wind and moving water is cost free. The cost of systems to capture the free energy of wind and moving water are thus capital costs.
Due to the structural complexity of typical wind turbines, there is a need for a wind energy capturing system that is technologically simple and inexpensive and easily scaled to produce systems capable of producing tens of kilowatts or megawatts of electrical power.
A typical wind and water turbine has not been optimized for low velocity fluid environments and Reynolds number (less than 1,000,000) operation. Geographical areas that have exceptional high average wind velocities (e.g., above about 15 mph) have generally been identified and exploited. Further expansion of wind energy systems will use designs capable of efficiently capturing kinetic energy in wind and other fluids having a lower average velocity (e.g., less than about 15 mph). The typical approach of using a complex and expensive kinetic energy capture system will have a poor return on investment in these lower average velocity sites.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for an inexpensive, efficient kinetic energy system capable of efficiently capturing the kinetic energy in lower average velocity fluids.